Romeo & Juliet Shakespeare | Romeo & Juliet Activities | Writing Prompts

Want to get your students writing better, thinking deeper, and analyzing the bigger ideas and themes of the play?

The prompts, guides, handouts, rubrics, and suggestions here are all proven to work based on sixteen years of teaching writing to all levels of high school. It’s not easy to take students through a writing assignment or to get them to improve their skills, but with the right tools, it can be done.

When you teach Romeo and Juliet with these writing activities you will:

• bring your students’ writing to the next level with proven prompts and essay questions

• engage your classes in critical thinking with the engaging assignments and creative writing ideas

• increase your students’ writing fluency by getting them to write often on the many ready-to-go prompts

• quickly and efficiently grade your students’ work by using the included rubrics and tips

With 74 bellringer prompts and 6 different writing assignments ranging from literary analysis to a cooperative play project, this resource will engage your students and make it easier for you to incorporate writing into your unit on Romeo and Juliet.

Here's what you'll get when you buy this resource:

First, I have included 9 fictional prompts for pre-reading. I always use these as a way to get students thinking about the situations and issues of Shakespeare’s work. They are a great way to introduce the issues of the play, and to get students to realize how much they have in common with the characters of Romeo and Juliet.

Next, I have included 74 bellringer prompts. You'll love starting each class with a quick five-minute freewrite. It’s a great way to get students focused and thinking about the themes of the day. From creative writing ideas, to questions that will get your students thinking, there is plenty here. All of the prompts are also on ready-to-go slides, so you can project one on the board and be all set for class.

The third kind of writing included here is reading responses. These are also a kind of write-to-learn assignment. You will have two ways of breaking down this writing for students. With the practical guide included here, your students will be writing independently on the play in no time. You can view the full-priced version of this resource by clicking here

The fourth element in this resource is a collaborative group play project. The goal of this project is for students to tackle a portion of Romeo and Juliet. Because this project involves writing as well as paraphrase and analysis of the text, it is suitable for a summative assessment. Additionally, this assignment encourages cooperative learning and creativity. A bonus for overworked English teachers is that it gets students writing, but there are fewer assignments to grade. You can view the full-priced version of this resource by clicking here .

The fifth option for a writing assignment tasks students with taking one or more of the idea-based prompts from the bellringers and turning it into an evidence-based literary analysis essay. You will appreciate the step-by-step instructions for that assignment as well. This is a more challenging assignment than the others, but if students are taken through the process outlined here, they should find success with their writing. This essay is one that students should complete after reading the play.

The sixth option for writing a piece based on the ideas and themes of the play is a comparative essay. Your students will complete this assignment over two class periods—with one day to complete the graphic organizer and one to write the essay. In order to complete this assignment, they’ll have to read other texts that they can compare with the themes of the play—those lessons are not included in this resource.

The prompts, guides, handouts, rubrics, and suggestions here are based on sixteen years of teaching writing to all levels of high school. It’s not easy to take students through a writing assignment or to get them to improve their skills, but with the right tools, it can be done.